Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.Various
History
Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.
Various
Science -- Periodicals
But here I must observe, that the branch, from which Dr. Kœmpfer’s
figure is taken, is produced from the lower part of a stem, which seems
to have been cut down, and not from a flowering branch; and it is not
improbable, that his description may have been taken from the same
branch: and if this be the case, it is easy to account for the minute
differences mentioned by Mr. Ellis; for it would not be difficult to
produce instances of hundreds of different trees and shrubs, whose
lower and upper branches differ much more in the particulars mentioned
by Mr. Ellis, than the figure and description given by Kœmpfer do
from the American Toxicodendron. I will only mention two of the
most obvious: the first is the white poplar, whose shoots from the
lower part of the stem, and the suckers from the root, are garnished
with leaves very different in form and size from those on the upper
branches, and are covered on both sides in the spring with a woolly
down. The next is the willow with smooth leaves, which, if a standard,
and the head lopped off, as is usual, the young shoots are garnished
with leaves much broader, and of different forms from those on the
older branches; and these have frequently a hairy down on their under
surface, which does not appear on those of the older. So that a person
unacquainted with these differences in the same tree would suppose they
were different. And the American Toxicodendron has varied in these
particulars much more, in different seasons, than what Mr. Ellis has
mentioned.
Mr. Ellis next says, that the Toxicodendron mentioned by Mr. Catesby,
in his Natural History of Carolina, is not the same with that, which
is now called by the gardeners poison-ash: but I am very positive of
the contrary; for most of the plants in the nursery-gardens about
London were first raised from the seeds, which were sent by Mr. Catesby
from Carolina; part of which were sent to the late Dr. Sherard, as
is mentioned by him in the Philosophical Transactions, Nº. 367; and
another part came to my hands, from which I raised a great many of the
plants, which were distributed, and some of them are now growing in the
Chelsea garden.
And that this shrub grows naturally in Carolina, I can have no doubt,
having received the seeds of it two or three times from the late Dr.
Dale, who gathered them in the woods of that country.
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